President's Message, 1216 UTBJ, Vol. 29, No. 6. 10

Change
is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or
present are certain to miss the future. -John F. Kennedy

Perhaps
because so much of what we do is governed by stare
decisis, lawyers strain to heed John F. Kennedy's
advice to look forward, not backward. Lawyers are
traditionalists doing business the old-fashioned way,
charging hourly rates, forming partnerships with other
lawyers, working in brick-and-mortar offices, and resolving
our clients' disputes in court. With the advent of online
legal services like Legal Zoom and Awo, the traditional model
of doing the business of law has been seriously challenged.
Query then, whether Utah lawyers are prepared for changes
that are already afoot? Thanks to a forward-looking Utah Bar,
an innovative Utah Administrative Office of the Courts, and
to many of you, I am happy to report that our profession in
Utah is not, to paraphrase President Kennedy, missing the
future by dwelling on the past.

This is
especially so when one compares the future of the practice of
law in Utah with the findings announced in August in the
American Bar Association Report on the Future of Legal
Services in the United States (2016), available at
http://www.americanbar.org/
content/dam/aba/images/abanews/20l6FLSReport_FNL_WEB.pdf (ABA
Report). While the ABA Report highlights areas where much
attention is needed, its recommendations demonstrate that
lawyering in Utah is ahead of the game, and indeed leading
the nation, in many ways.

The ABA
Report begins by lamenting the ever-widening access to
justice gap that prevents thousands of Utahns and millions of
Americans from obtaining badly needed legal services. This is
hardly surprising. In fact, the Utah Bar's Futures
Commission studied this problem in detail in 2015. Futures
Commission of the Utah State Bar, Report and Recommendations
on the Future of Legal Services in Utah (July 29, 2015),
https://www.utahbar.org/
wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015_Futures_Report_revised.pdf.
But the ABA pulls no punches when it identifies one of the
main reasons the access to justice gap exists: "The
traditional law practice business model constrains
innovations that would provide greater access to, and enhance
the delivery of legal services." ABA Report, p. 5,
§ 5.

Ouch!
How could this be, given what Jerry Seinfeld once said about
how smart we all are? Seinfeld. The Visa, Opening
Monologue (NBC television broadcast No. 56, Jan. 27,1993)
("To me, a lawyer is basically the person that [sic]
knows the rules of the country. We're all throwing the
dice, playing the...